http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=387180
===
After the recent upgrade to Thunderbird 1.5, images that had been displaying inline (both inline images and attachments, as I do have the option active in my settings) stopped showing up in the message window. On investigating the issue, I discovered the problem was only happening with certain senders, and that those senders were using various builds of Eudora. (It was later discovered by a Tbird-using friend that images sent by Outlook -- NOT Outlook Express, the regular Outlook -- causes the same problem to show up in Tbird.) I *had* been able to view images sent by these people previously with Thunderbird, this is a new "misbehavior". I have posted examples of content-type, header, etc, information in the above thread, where others have reported the same problem as well. I also see mention of it on the various Thunderbird forums in other places, so it's not just me.
These images/messages had been coming through a discussion list and I discovered that others using Thunderbird on the list also are having the same problem. I did some experimenting and discovered that not *all* Eudora users were affected (see the samples -- Eudora v.6x seems to have fixed it and v7x broke it again), and it was discovered (Thank you, Lee) that the affected senders' mail programs are tagging the jpg attachments as : Content-Type: application/octet-stream; name="filename.jpg"
If the attachments are correctly tagged as image/jpg they work fine.
I understand that this is an incorrect labeling by the sending mail program, but that still does not explain why:
1. I had been able to view images from these people previously, and the only change in the scenario has been upgrading Thunderbird, and
2. Every other mail program being used by the several hundred people on this list appears to be viewing the images in these emails fine ... only Thunderbird users are affected.
It appears that other mail programs (just an uejjumakated guess here <G>) have the ability to look at the attachment name/extension as well as the content-type and "translate" the image correctly even if the sending mail program is lacking in 'net protocol IQ.
Thunderbird appears to have lost the ability to figure it out.
It's been suggested that I bring this here to see if others can join the experiment, and see if the problem can be looked into officially.
Thanks!
--Gayze
Addendum: Further investigation has revealed that this change in Thunderbird's ability to parse the file name/extension occurred not with 1.5, but between 0.9 and 1.0. (A gal on this list still using 0.9 can see them fine.) Since I upgraded right from 0.9 to 1.5 I never saw the problem in the interim. Oddly, though, in the 1.5 **beta** I was using, I **could** see the images. Unless of course I was hallucinating all that time. <G>
